Since no objection from Mr. Bourke (or anyone else) has been forthcoming, I
shall proceed with my declared intention of opening a thread for tips on


know more about such things (that would be most of the people reading this)
will add their knowledge to the pool.  Thus begins:
--------------------------------------------------------------
THE UNOFFICIAL, LARGELY DISORGANIZED LIST OF POVRAY SHORT CODE TIPS, TRICKS &
METHODS:
--------------------------------------------------------------













avoid having to specify these.  You can also eliminate one of these and still



object definition.  For example:





7.  Vector expressions with zero values can be shortened as follows:





8.   Although rather non-specific, this general approach can be helpful.  Search

the features that you want to work with to see where you can get away with
using a default value.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks in advance to all contributors,

Mike C.

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If there is a number followed by another token (like a keyword), the 
current POV-Ray parser allows you to skip the whitespace. For example:

diffuse 0.6ambient 0.1

For numbers in the 0-1 range, you don't really need the leading 0 here, so:

diffuse .6ambient .1

And in this particular case, where the number starts with a period 
instead of a digit, you can even do this:

diffuse.6ambient.1

Same goes for negative numbers, which start with a dash instead of a digit.

I'm using diffuse and ambient just to give an example. In practice, you 
would use *nothing* according to Mike's tip #4 :) But this tip is useful 
for other keywords.

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> 7.  Vector expressions with zero values can be shortened as follows:





Also:
"<1,0,1>" becomes x+z
"<2,0,2>" becomes 2*(x+z)
or other combinations

-tgq

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Trevor G Quayle wrote:
>> 7.  Vector expressions with zero values can be shortened as follows:




> 
> Also:
> "<1,0,1>" becomes x+z
> "<2,0,2>" becomes 2*(x+z)
7 chars -> 7 chars. not much of an improvement ;)
I would suggest in stead: 2-2*y or 2-y-y

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> If there is a number followed by another token (like a keyword), the 
> current POV-Ray parser allows you to skip the whitespace.
[snip]

In addition, you can seperate tokens by "preprocessor declarations":

	sphere{0,1}
	
or
	sphere{0 1}

becomes

	sphere{0#local r=.422;1}

Of course this makes only sense if you need the "#local r=.422" anyway :)


Regards,
Florian

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andrel <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> Trevor G Quayle wrote:
> >> 7.  Vector expressions with zero values can be shortened as follows:




> >
> > Also:
> > "<1,0,1>" becomes x+z
> > "<2,0,2>" becomes 2*(x+z)
> 7 chars -> 7 chars. not much of an improvement ;)
> I would suggest in stead: 2-2*y or 2-y-y

Sorry, bad example, more applicable to larger numbers

<20,0,20> -> 20*(x+z)

Probably better to scale the whole scene though instead...

-tgq

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> Trevor G Quayle wrote:
>>> 7.  Vector expressions with zero values can be shortened as follows:





>>
>> Also:
>> "<1,0,1>" becomes x+z
>> "<2,0,2>" becomes 2*(x+z)
> 7 chars -> 7 chars. not much of an improvement ;)
> I would suggest in stead: 2-2*y or 2-y-y

If you'll need such values *often*, you can #local xz=x+z; Then you can 
use 2*xz which is only 4 chars.

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Trevor G Quayle wrote:
> andrel <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
>> Trevor G Quayle wrote:
>>>> 7.  Vector expressions with zero values can be shortened as follows:




>>> Also:
>>> "<1,0,1>" becomes x+z
>>> "<2,0,2>" becomes 2*(x+z)
>> 7 chars -> 7 chars. not much of an improvement ;)
>> I would suggest in stead: 2-2*y or 2-y-y
> 
> Sorry, bad example, more applicable to larger numbers
> 
> <20,0,20> -> 20*(x+z)
20-20*y is still shorter ;)
> 
> Probably better to scale the whole scene though instead...
> 
> -tgq
> 
>

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"Mike the Elder" <zer### [at] wyanorg> wrote:




of course, at the cost of flat scenes.  It can be useful if you're not going for
photorealistic 3D scenes and is mostly concerned with colors, shapes and
composition.

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One thing I enjoyed playing with and exploiting last time is the default 
color maps for POV textures.  Using the scale and poly_wave keywords can 
create some selectivity within the default colors

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